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the police come to your hotel room and arrest you as a spy, even though you haven’t been spying. They take you to the police station. They say that you may make one call that they will listen to both sides of. They warn you that anyone you call will also be under suspicion of spying. Whom do you call? ”
    â€œStephen,” Pip said.
    There was a flicker of disappointment in Annagret’s face. “This Stephen? The Stephen here?”
    â€œYes, what’s wrong with that?”
    â€œForgive me, but I thought you would say your mother. You’ve mentioned her in every other answer so far. She’s the only person you trust.”
    â€œBut that’s only trust in a deep way,” Pip said. “She’d go insane with worry, and she doesn’t know anything about how the world works, and so she wouldn’t know who to call to help me. Stephen would know exactly who to call.”
    â€œTo me he seems a bit weak.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHe seems weak. He’s married to that angry, controlly person.”
    â€œYes, I know, his marriage is unfortunate—believe me, I know.”
    â€œYou have feelings for him!” Annagret said with dismay.
    â€œYes, I do, so what?”
    â€œWell, you didn’t tell me. We’re telling each other everything, on the sofa, and you didn’t tell me this.”
    â€œYou didn’t tell me you used to sleep with Andreas Wolf!”
    â€œAndreas is a public person. I have to be careful. And that’s many years ago now.”
    â€œYou talk about him like you’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
    â€œPip, please,” Annagret said, seizing her hands. “Let’s not fight. I didn’t know you had feelings for Stephen. I’m sorry.”
    But the wound the word weak had inflicted was hurting Pip more now, not less, and she was aghast to realize how much personal data she’d already surrendered to a woman so confident of her beauty that she could fill her face with metal and chop her hair (so it looked) with lawn clippers. Pip, who had no grounds for such confidence, snatched her hands away and stood up and noisily dropped her cereal bowl in the sink. “I’m going upstairs now—”
    â€œNo, we still have six questions—”
    â€œBecause I’m obviously not going to South America, and I don’t trust you one bit, not the tiniest bit, and so why don’t you and your masturbating boyfriend go down to L.A. and squat in somebody else’s house and give your questionnaire to somebody who’s into somebody stronger than Stephen. I don’t want you in our house anymore, and neither does anybody else. If you had any respect for me, you would have seen I didn’t even want to be here now.”
    â€œPip, please, wait, I’m really, really sorry.” Annagret did seem genuinely distressed. “We don’t have to do any more questions—”
    â€œI thought it was a form we had to follow. Had to, had to. God, I’m stupid.”
    â€œNo, you’re really smart. I think you’re fantastic. I think only maybe your life revolves too much about men, a little bit, right now.”
    Pip stared in amazement at this fresh insult.
    â€œMaybe you want a female friend who’s something older but used to be so much like you.”
    â€œYou were never like me,” Pip said.
    â€œNo, I was. Sit down, please, ja? Talk with me.”
    Annagret’s voice was so silky and commanding, and her insult had cast such humiliating light on Jason’s presence in Pip’s bedroom, that Pip almost obeyed her and sat down. But when she was gripped by her distrust of people it became physically unbearable to stay with them. She fled down the hallway, hearing the scrape of a chair behind her, the sound of her name being called.
    On the second-floor landing, she paused to seethe. Stephen was weak? She thought about men too much? That is so nice . That really